Search

Comprehending and discussing Koreans’ experiences of inter-religious dialogue requires a precise understanding of their religious hybridity. To this end, this article first delves into South Korea’s multireligious and syncretic landscape. Subsequently, it focuses on the concept of chungch’ŭng-sinang, or multilayered faith, highlighting how Koreans have constructed their own religiously multilayered and open internal structures based on their historical encounters with various religions. Finally, building on this understanding, this article examines how an in-depth understanding of Korean religious hybridity transforms our understanding of their experiences in inter-religious dialogue. Acknowledging their hybridity facilitates an understanding of experiences that go beyond mere acquisition of knowledge about others and a deepening sense of their identities—involving the discovery of internal otherness. While this approach may weaken the logic of religion, it can foster dialogue that is more liberating, formative, and humanizing.

The number of students from other religious traditions is increasing in Christian seminaries in the United States. However, seminaries have different motivations, visions, and rationales that determine whether and how they accept these students. The purpose of this article is to examine how seminaries approach this matter and what issues follow. The author suggests that the revised framework of Van der Ven and Ziebertz’s models of religious education (the monoreligious, multireligious, and interreligious models) can be particularly helpful in theorizing the current context of seminaries that are becoming multireligious. This article then explores the challenges that each model encounters and finds that those challenges, or conundrums, are closely related to the tensions between values such as openness, educational justice, and institutional identity.

In the late twentieth century, interreligious education emerged as a way to transform one’s attitude toward other religions and reduce religious prejudice. This article addresses the philosophical aspects of this practice, in particular the problems that arise when an essentialist approach is accommodated. The problems include the why (philosophical rationale), the who (subject and participant), the what (content), and the future (purpose). In response, the author explores how a relational approach grounded in a Whiteheadian philosophy of multiplicity would allow us to understand interreligious education differently. The article finds that a relational approach can help us imagine and embody interreligious education in a more humanizing, inclusive, and transformative way.